Pentaho platform introduction

A few weeks ago, I've done a presentation to introduce the Java/J2EE world to some BI consultant at Sword. During this presentation, I also covered a little bit the Pentaho platform as it is a good illustration of the challenges and issues one face when trying to integrate various open source heterogeneous components.

Here is a slideshow on this second part which introduces the Pentaho platform ....






I'm hoping to investigate the ROLAP engine (Mondrian) soon ...

Martin

Kas, Turkey

Last October we headed to Turkey for vacations. Having a couple of Turkish friends, I had been warned by its natural beauty and cultural richness, but it did surprise me anyway! It is a bit surprising that we do not hear much coming from Turkey compared to similar Mediterranean places (do you know anyone not having been to either Greece, Italy, Spain or France?).

Landing on Istanbul, we are quickly reminded that it is a Muslim world by seeing the number of Minaret breaking through the skyline of the city. One of the first sound we heard the next morning outside our hotel (at the airport), was the Adhan (call to prayers in Islamic religion) coming out from the speakers installed onto the Minaret. It was our first pleasant change of culture but a bit of stress as we were expected to catch another flight transiting to Antalya but had to wait in the small bus for, what I suspect, the driver to complete his Salah (muslim prayers). Traditionally, the prayers are the obligatory rites of the religion, and are to be performed five times a day. However, we found the religious fever in Turkey to be quite moderate ... and apparently the Salah is now spoken in Arabic language which most Turkish do not even understand!

So that will be it for the religious signs since the religion is mostly left outside the public affair in this officially "laïque" society (secular). For the more curious, you can refer to Atatürk (founder of the Republic of Turkey) revolution and modernization of the society just after the Ottoman empire fall down... BTW, Turkish women received rights to vote before most westerner countries: 1930 (ref. http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm).

The place we chose in Turkey was the Mediterranean region just south west of Antalia as this area offers quite a lot of variety in terms of natural and cultural attractions.

Our kids enjoying the view from the house rented from the french tenant. BTW, quite a lot of retired Europeans are staying over here and enjoy the nice climate at low price¨.. rent can average around 300€!

Ok a little bit of history ( Turkey's history is anything but little ;-)) . I remember not being very good at it during my young age , because I've never been motivated in learning stuff simply for what they were without involving some kind of logical thinking and reasoning..... (it could be related to how history was taught as it seemed to me that the goal was to cram and memorize as many events as possible without much hindsight on the relations and intricacies between these).

Having said that, my country history was limited to about 400 years! I can help but have .. a small thought for turkish kids having to learn their country history at school!

Referring to my Guide Bleu de Turquie (Blue guides are probably the oldest and best of tourism guide.. ), the long history of Turkey has been characterized by many different change of reigns and regime overruled which evolved in time almost from the Bronze age up to now!! A very brief summary would need to at least give these over-lapping periods :

1. pre-historic Bronze (XI to 1200 BC) with the first establishment, the Hittites empire taking control of Babylon, until the fall of Troy and of the empire.
   
2. Greek (XII to I) civilization from the conquest of Alexander the Great to his death and the later control by Roman.
3. Roman empire (300 to 565 AD) with the change of Byzance to Constantinople (new Roma) done by Constantin.
4. Byzantine (726 to X AD, the Roman empire continuation into the middle age) from the iconoclasm (ban of religious icons) to the schism seperating the Orthodox and the Roman church.
5. Seljuq dynasty (1055 to 1303) originating from the Turcoman tribal around Bagdad and going into a long westerner migration to the fall following the invasion of Mongol
   
6. Ottoman empire (1326 to 1923) emerging from the Turco-Persian Seljuq in northern Antolia, the Ottomans will remain in control of the region for a few centuries and developping a brillant civilization reaching passed the Balkans, the middle-east and north Africa. Unable to modernize they will succomb to the europeans and russians and finally collapse after the end of WW1.
   
7. Modern Turkish (1923-) from the recognition of a reduced territory sovereignty (compared to Ottoman period) and the establishment of a laic and parlementary-based republic. It is during this period that a massive exchange of people occured (1.3 million) between Greece and Turkey.
   

This evolution has left many traces that can still be witnessed in various part of this region. The evolution of the city of Kas is a perfect illustration of this long history....see next.

Kas and vicinity:

The archaeological search done in and around Kas, revealed the city of Antiphellus. Originally this ancient town of Antiphellus, was the harbour of the town of Phellus which stood in front of it. Alexander the Great (Alexander III from Macedon) annexed this region into his kingdom to make it part of Greek empire. During Roman empire Antiphellus gained importance and became an episcopal centre during the Byzantine period. After, it was conquered by the Arab who rename it Andifli (there are turkish companies with this name nowadays), and later ruled by the Tekeogullan Principality (I'm confused here...it is probably the first time it happens: I like to grab info from touristic pamphplet/guide while travelling and later get back home and google these ... I obviously get other info, nice photos, people comments, etc.. ! Now nothing came out with this principality name !!! I guess the Tekeogullan had had very limited historical & geographical impact ... I should ask for the Turkish equivalence and look for it in Turkish).

Obviously, the region passed under the control of the Ottoman, where the peninsula became important as sea trade increases. Now Kas county has become a predominant touristic region admired for its natural & cultural richness settled in between the handsome Taurus mountains and the crystal clear water of the Mediterranean.

The area around Kas is called Teke peninsula located just beneath the Taurus mountains. The larger region between the bays Antalya and Fethiye corresponds to, what was known in the ancient time, as Lycia which regroup different cities considered the first federation in the world with democratic principles (according to wikipedia, the US constitution would have been influenced by the Lycian). It later became part of the roman empire.

Typical views seen around Kas with the sea, mountain and vegetation..

That is Laurie standing on the uphill just above Kas with its bay and peninsula (the island further away into the sea is actually the most estearn's Greek island Mesogeios... basically located a few kilometers from Kas)

Again some nice view of the bay at sunset.

Small creek commonly seen on the coast from Kas to Fethiye.

The familiy just outside the small port of Kas.

Also in Kas, you can find a very impressive sarcophagus (Kral Mezan or King's tomb) carved from a single block with scripting in the Lycian language (dating from the 4^th century BC), see photos:

We finally visited during the week a few other sites: ...Patara (with the longest sandy beach in the rergion..), Kekova (the underwater anciant city), Xanthos (a protected Unesco site), the gorge of Saklikent, Myra and Olympos.

Patara:

Patara integrated Lucian union in the 2^nd century AD as one of its six cities (we have visited 3 of these 6: Patara, Xanthos and Myra). It was also the birthplace of St. Nicholas (born c.260-280 AD) which later lead to the legend of Santa Claus (see Myra below).

The site is quite impressive and very well located. Near the Victory Monument (see photos below of the three arches), excavation 100 meters ahead revealed the world's oldest detailed road map which shows distances between Lycian cities. Here I presume the map has been moved to a museum since after walking around and checking all the place out (not much help available on-site ), no sign of the map could be seen. This turned out a bit of disappointment for a former GIS analyst!... Actually, checking later on the web, there is neither trace nor any image of the map ...just a description! So this is difficult to verify.

The famous Victory monument

The amphitheatre of Patara.

Also exceptionally in Patara is that they also have found what is possibly the world's oldest Lighthouse ...that could have been destroyed following a Tsunami (http://www.lycianturkey.com/lycian_sites/patara-lighthouse.htm).

The ongoing effort of restauration, excavation and clearing the sand have allowed to show the main street with its re-erected columns ...

Some monument with Lycian-language writing

Kekova:

This region characterized by the eponym island is quite incredible as a lot of its ruins are completely under the sea surface level. An earthquake is believed to have sunken partly the region during the 2^nd century. Being quite touristic, we were not too wary on our way to the site and actually hitchhiked one guy who apparently needed a ride to the village (yes that was quite naive). Ok we finally got free parking but had to deal with an overpriced boat trip with a local fisherman... anyway we made a good trip and had our own personal boat for the visit...and that the kids could steer for free!

Various ruins in and above sea level

The famous well preserved sarcophagus

Laurie steering the boat with our friendly fisherman

Xanthos:

This place is somewhat more valued and better serviced with touristic information (there are gov. people working at the site), probably due to its Unesco inscription as a world heritage site. Based on findings on the acropolis, the city dates back to the 8^th century BC but had mostly grew during the Roman empire who practically re-build the entire city after its destruction caused by Brutus!

The place offered a large variety of ruins for the .. and for kids nice collection of turtles spread out here and there ... our kids were obviously more motivated by searching turtles than anything else.

Here are some pics taken there:

Unfortunatly, the initial excavation carried out in mid-1800 by the english have moved many valuable piece of art to the British museum. This is one example where we only see the relief re-created by clay:

and... yes Mathias did find one turtle

Also not too far from Xanthos are the gorge of Saklikent the second largest in Europe with its 20km long (after Samera in Crete, so it is the longest and deepest in Turkey). When most of the snow has felt (after april), we can walk about 4km into the gorge.

Myra:

Another beautiful place belonging to Lycian league is Myra located at the current town called Kale (or Demre, apparently its new name). It features a necropolis with the tombs scultured directly onto this mountain.

Also, Myra is where St. Nicolas was bishop, so we can find his church and tomb which had been partly renovated by the russian when the Tsar Alexander II bought the church in 1863. The place has been obviously turned into a touristic shopping stop...what else to expect from Santa Claus ancestor!! The place is full of small shops of Byzantine art.

Olympos

Not much to say here, as my intention was to stop by on our way back to Antalya. I was mostly curious about the eternal flames to be found there and known as the Chimaera (see mythical link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(mythology) ) and which is fueled naturally by methane liberated from the earth cracks. However, again we underestimated the time to reach the place and finally only reached a very strange place filled with funny looking tree houses and mud everywhere (I guess the place was under major restauration? ..and the family was not so inspired by the place! ):

But this gave us the opportinuty to check out the Olympos mountain, which gave its name to the city. In turkish, it is called the Tahtalı Dağı (or Timber Mountain) and alsmots reaches 2400m.

We finsihed the trip to Antalia where we have stayed for a night in the old city district (Kaleici) strictly reserved for pedestrians. It has a lot of Ottoman-type architectural buildinds...

the famous, Kesik Minare (litterally the broken Minaret) going through all sort of transformation from various periods and finally partly destroyed during a fire in 1896!

The view of the Taurus mountain from Antalya

Finally some generic comments about our trip, that could be useful to anyone planning a first-time trip to this place:

+the food: great and healthy. Very much appreciated the Mezeler (starters) which serve very similar purpose as Tapas in Spain and typically very heathly. A must is the Hummus probably the best I ever had!

+Roads : travelling around the region is not so simple as it is quite remote and isolated by mountain and sea ....the mountain litterally reaches the sea making any road construction quite expansive and a more direct roads with tunnel makes it proably much more expansive than a longer roads avoiding the most predominant obstacles. For example, Kas – Kaleucagiz à vol d'oiseau is 20km ... but when we got there by roads to see Kekova, it took us about 1 hour 30min from our rented house!? It seems as if the place is more accessible by boats, as confirmed by te number europenan boats at the port, and some having sailed as far away as Norway (actually one couple we met reached Turkey from the east after a complete trip around the world!!).

+ the accessibility of the ruins & vestige. We can litterally use these sites as a playground...this caused some problem as people can easily bring rocks or other artefacts with them which is obviously illegal. It is just very different from Italy where they are understandably obsessed by security and preservation issues.

+ trees blossom amid the very dryness soil (however it is surely high in nutrient.. and we often witness what was probably Terra Nossa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Rossa) with its reddish color! (reminded me of a trip to Prince Edward Island with its famous red beach ...). A lot of Grenada Pomegranate apple, Orange and Lime trees grow about anywhere ... sometimes amazingly out of concrete and dry soil in dense cities!

- On the negative side: the continuous buying pressure when walking around touristic and commercial district and neighborhood (ok that is also very culture-related, and for them that is also a way of communicating but it is not something I'm comfortable with). Also there is often confusion with price, as most of the time price not shown and sometimes after negociating we just realized that they were talking in euros, or yet that there is a sur-tax with some plate since they were apparently over-sized... this infamous touristic price versus local .. . and some nice picture at a friend price : (this photo was worth 2.50 euros !)

Ok that is about it for what I can remember... overall it is a place higly recommeded and we will surely go back to visit other regions in the future ... Cappadocia (http://www.cappadociaturkey.net/) looks like a very good candidate!.

Martin

Summer break

During our last summer vacation we first headed to France to enjoy its renown culinary art...pretty much guaranteed to eat very well no matter where we end up to!

We spent a week around the region of Drôme, the department located in southeast of France.
Although its geography and climate is different from where we live, we only had to drive about 3.5hours to get there (ok this can vary depending on traffic condition mostly an issue in and around the bottleneck A7 autoroute du Soleil). This region is less touristic than Provence, so it does not have its disadvantages like the overly pricy restaurants and over-crowded places.. This department along with the ones nearby (e.g. Ardèche, Vaucluse) seems to have been better preserved from the wars destruction effect.

Just next to our house we rented, there was the village of Savasse, located north of Montélimar and on the east bank of the Rhone:



The house located on the south side of the hill offered the natural advantage of protecting us against the sometimes brutal northerly Mistral wind. Looking at all the vegetation found at the house or nearby, we would say that the climate is very Mediterranean-like.

Here are some of the plants we found at the house "Laurier-rose", Artichoke, "Figuier", "monnaie-du-pape"..

Also present throughout the region are the small perched and fortified villages typical of the middle-age period (built explicitly as a defensive position). During a ride with my bike, I actually stumbled into one of these villages: Rochemaure (an officially classified site), where we returned at night to visit and eat out :

We encountered quite a few other similar village during a getaway to the Gorges d'Ardèche (the french version of the Grand Canyon), there is one that attracted our interest just by its funny name “Bidon” (http://www.ardeche.guideweb.com/ville/bidon/), literally meaning fake or phony in french!

The Gorges itself are less spectacular than the Grand Canyon, but they are worth the trip. This is apparently shared by a great number of people when we consider the number of tourists seen camping and canoeing at the gorge. I now better understand the familiar complains of Europeans about the tourists invasions in France, and why someone could appreciate a country like Canada for its quietness or emptiness !

One destination that I've reserved only to myself was the Mont Ventoux located in the Vaucluse. Yes, I took the long ride up this mountain often called Géant de Provence. The riding difficulties are mostly caused by temperature (the first 10km are quite hot although protected by shade of the pinède -pine forest), the length of the ascent (1617 m over 21,8km from the small and beautiful village of Bédouin), and the constantly grade offering no break or pause getting even worse near the summit with the last 2-3km having the steepest gradient (over 10%).

Just too bad my mobile phone did not have enough battery to take picture of the beautiful 360degree view up there. In today's Internet era, you are never too far from being exposed to the web. There were people taking pictures to publish them on the Internet and offering the possibility to buy a full resolution image. These guys make a living off vanity of most cyclers...they'll surely get rich!! ...yes as this site is all about self-exposure (;-)), here you go with some snapshots:

as seen by the poor resolution of these advertised pics, I did not actually purchase these pictures..

Speaking of cycling, during my vacation I also cycled to Verbier with a friend that visited over. Verbier has a well-known classical festival.... however this time it conflicted with the 15^th stage of tour de France. It turned out to be the decisive stage where Cantador completely dominated during the 15km ascent (yes this is again a non-human performance, but nothing new for this sport always bringing its share of controversy).

I've never thought that the tour could be such a popular event... there were near 100,000 people all gathered in the Verbier ascent! Probably a good 25% were cyclers, so it was quite exciting after the race to ride among all pelotons scattered on the way down to Martigny. We also rode with the pros, as most of them quickly returned to their team camper located below!

Later on in our vacation, we visited Yvoir which is also very near our place. It is a small medieval village located just on the other side of the Leman, and that celebrated its 700^th year of history in 2006. coming from Switzerland, the easiest is to go by boat leaving Nyon and only lasting about half an hour.

Although the village is very nice-looking with all its flowers and old stones, the shopping industry completely took over. And this has become as expensive or even more than Switzerland.

Ok that's about it, a special thanks to all my family who shared these visits with us and also provided some of the pictures shown here.

Martin

My open source toolset

I'm always trying to look for open source alternative when it comes to software I'm using. Here's my software application toolsets originating almost exclusively from the open source community (this list is to be maintained).



Editor/Player/Viewer:

• Open Office: I used to only exploit Writer as a replacement for Word, now I even see myself doing presentation stuff using Impress (although I rarely used powerpoint at all), Math, and next target will be Calc as an Excel replacement!

• jEdit: although originally meant for developer with syntax color highlighting... this is a great and lean txt editor written in Java and a very good notepad replacement.

• freeMind: a great mind-mapping tool. Warning, its multi-purposes usage can become addictive!
  

• yEd: I'm often using this Graph Editor at work to create some hierarchical-based or tree-based graphing. It has a few glitches but well compensated by its simplicity of use.
  

• Gimp: I don't have the patience and talent to do any photo/picture edition, however this one came in handy a few times...
  

• VLC: simply the best media player around. With its independence of systems codecs, it supports merely all video & audio encoding format. It now finally reached release 1.0, so to be downloaded before it gets acquired!
  

Misc tools:

• KeePass: a password manager, with this you will only need to remember a unique password: the Master Password!

• Avg: a free anti-virus...although this one does not come from open source.

• WinSCP: a ftp/sftp client.

• jZip: alternative to winzip or winrar.
  

Internet:

• Firefox and all its add-ins: been a while since this needed introduction!
  

• Rssowl: supports RSS, RDF and Atom newsfeed

• Twiki: a nice and easy to install stand-alone Wiki.

• Plucker: a great tool for my palm to read Web content and e-book offline on the train (not open source)!
  

• Miro: I hooked up my old PC into my TV with HDMI at home. My kids can now enjoy exciting, interesting and fun content from Internet (yes obviously this needs some form of supervision)

• Thunderbird: another good Mozilla application !
  

Development and database:

• Eclipse: don't use it more directly since I don't code much anymore, however its pervasiveness is such that you end-up using it indirectly elsewhere (e.g. Talend, Pentaho, Websphere studio, BIRT, SAS...)

• StarUML: Without going overboard with reverse-engineering and code generation, I like this one to create some UML-type diagram ... can even be used to get quick ERD!

• SQuirreL SQL: a good alternative to the too famous TOAD... which is limited only to Oracle. Also has a nice Tabbing capacity for your query result (a parallel with what distinguished for a long time Firefox from IE). You just need to avoid trying to cache all DB schema objects from a big Oracle datawarehouse!
• Apache Derby or any of its reincarnation... very useful when you need a small footprint DB for some SQL prototyping.
  

BI and Data mining tools:

• Pentaho: these guys have looked around and bundle the best open source projects to offer a full BI platform. Their original concept is that the platform is more geared toward Process and Workflow concept than other traditional BI solution.

• Weka: the Java-based data mining originating from the University of Waikato and now integrated into the Pentaho platform.
  

• Yale (now known as RapidMiner): A more commercial approach has now been adopted as suggested by its new Rapid-I branding, however a community offer is still offered.
  

• Talend: The ETL/ELT open source offer now associated with JasperSoft.
  

Martin

Star Schema Limitation

The star schema is probably the most over-used data modeling paradigm used today in data warehousing. It is very attractive due to its simplicity (especially important for business) and its pervasiveness, and as such people has the tendency to overuse it at every layer of the BI data platform.

There is one use case where its use quickly become problematic and causes more harm than benefice. This is when we want to track-down all slowly changes occurring around the Customer of the enterprise (this term is used loosely here, as it can mean different thing such as subscriber, client, account, etc..). The slowly changes referred here must not be confused with simple attributes (e.g. customer age, name, ...) usually handled within the dimension itself using specific slowly changing dimension rules (SCD type 1,2,3,.., 6 and still counting). Here, we refer to important Indicator information usually spread out in separate Dimensions or other data structure.

More specifically, these slowly changes can be comprised of very general Indicator characterizing the Customer either directly obtained from operational system (such as account type, price plan, subscriber status, address, dealer and channel, etc) or features derived/calculated from data within the integration layer of the BI platform (such as customer value, churn likelihood, behavior, customer segmentation, etc).

The star schema can be used for this goal: we simply design the model around all Dimension representing the features being tracked down, along with the dimension Customer and two links to Date/time Dimensions in order to define the validity period of the fact row (the start and end date). In other words, each fact row represents a new state for the Customer in time and is created whenever one or more slowly changes (characterized by dimension) have occurred.

This approach offers a more or less standardized approach in BI (star schema model) allowing a very simple Query logic with multiple dimensions (indicators) to be reported simultaneously. However, this advantage is trade-off by a number of important negative issues :

• Flexibility: Physical data model is not amenable to easily permit changes in terms of new dimension/indicator as this requires a new version of the model every time (people working in large organization will surely appreciate the implication cost of changing data model inside database in Production!!).

• Extensibility: There is a limit on the number of dimension/indicator that can be added into the structure as this requires a significant cost in terms of disk storage for every new dimension/indicator. The star schema is simply not designed to track down a variable number of indicators dynamically.

• Volumetry: Data structure leads to a great deal of disk storage waste as dimension/indicator are duplicated in all rows even when their values remain unchanged (ex. Dealer or Geography indicator are very unlikely to change throughout the Customer history but their values will be repeated for each and every new Customer fact-row state).

• Clarity: This particular model mixes two concepts into a single fact table (1. event-based fact and 2. snapshot-based fact representing the state at fixed point in time) blurring its role and increasing query complexity for all EOP, BOP type of reports.

• Loading: The ETL feed is likely to be more complex with this type of structure, which results that only minor changes are done over time and typically no new information element is rarely added.

There are better solution that we can model in order to provide such typical historized view of the Customer evolution in time. One such solution is presented next with a simple logical model:

This solution is dubbed 1-dimensional model within the organization I'm currently consulting for (because everything evolves around the generic Indicator table), however I could not find similar reference on the Internet, so if you are aware of a some kind of official terminology, don't hesitate to let me know...

The table 'Customer Indicator Association' is central to this data structure and is similar to the Fact table whose role is to capture all association customer-indicator in time. Within this context, the Indicator table corresponds to dimension records found in various dimension table, whereas the Indicator Type corresponds to the actual Dimension.

The pre-requisite of this data model is that all Customer must be only associated to only one Indicator value by Indicator Type at any point in time. Some other important aspects of this data structure is summarized here:

• Each time state of Customer would change for one Indicator value, we would generate a new fact row with the corresponding Effective start date (and Expiration from date set to some infinite key date) and the previous state would be expired (update done on the expired to).

• Only necessary changes are tracked down, .... meaning a Customer whose state never changed from Activation (for a specific Indicator) would only have a single fact row for this particular Indicator.

  Date (start and end) correspond to real date when the change of indicator occurred: usually based on operational system date (for Indicator obtained from these systems) or business rule for Indicator derived from integration layer (e.g. Customer Value re-calculation period).

• No elapse time period is allowed between the previous Expired date and the current Effective Date. This ensures data integrity state to state, so that

Key implementation decisions that need to be chosen with this data structure :

• How to align all Indicators once a new customer is activated. Two options are possible: concurrently aligned all Indicators with the first Start date even if some Indicator still has no value, or yet allow for Indicator in time.

• How to close Indicators once a Customer cancels all activity (no more customer). Again, we can align all Indicators with a transition state such as 'no longer customer', or leave with the latest Indicator value before cancellation occurred.

• How to treat technical changes of Indicator (i.e. it is not rare in operational system that Customer change status within a short period of time to return to original status... technical changes without real consequence). A grace period can be defined to account and ignore for technical changes.

The indicator association table will easily supports the full historization of all slowly changing Customer related indicators (existing ones, new ones, modified one and future ones) without any model change. This has the potential to become the central and only place in your BI data platform where to hold atomic indicators for Customer.

Obviously, this solution will present the flip-side advantage/disadvantage of the more traditional Star schema solution. The most important aspect regarding these concerns the Reporting extraction logic which is more complex and less optimal. In essence, this structure is not aimed toward end-user Reporting since more complex and far less performant Query logic must be employed for data extraction (this is somewhat mitigated with the use of latest SQL analytical functions). This is especially true since most query involve multiple predicate conditions imposed on a number of dimension. So usually, a downstream data structure would exist more geared toward end-user query (... before giving further details I will have to see how could I post something on this without infringing contractual agreement).

Martin

Half-blog: the container is blog-style but not its content

I haven't had much time nor energy to post anything here... usually this happens when I'm overloaded with technical documentation at work. The past months have been very busy writing business functional specification, modeling and design and other architecture document. Not that I despise this or anything, but it seems that whenever I exceed a number of written words threshold (for a given time period) then writing becomes less enjoyable. I guess this is applicable for a lot of things we do in life!

I'm now taking the opportunity to change the title of this blog to something that reflects more what it's all about: Everything but a blog.

Ok don't have to point out the contradiction... however I could have also defined it more judiciously: Half-blog : the container is blog-style but not its content. This is particularly true with the everything-must-be-instantaneous trend reaching new level with Twitter fad! That is simply not my style, as I'd much rather take the time to reflect on things then simply comment them...which is a probably not a bad thing considering the amount of time I spent doing analysis and architecture type of work.

So for the upcoming time, I will continue using this space more as an archival document repository, a reference tool for technology, a handy place to keep my notes and .... probably more and more as a tool for family experience sharing.


Martin

Ski à Tignes

Parmi les avantages d'avoir plusieurs semaines de vacances en Europe, est l'organisation du calendrier scolaire nous incitant (lire contraignant) à tout arrêter lors des congés scolaires!! Mais ceci s'avère des plus appréciés, par exemple pendant une semaine durant le mois de février, toutes les écoles ferment pour les vacances d'hiver et y'a pas trop de service de garde, donc ça donne un congé bien mérité pour toute la famille.

Nous avons voulu en profiter pour initier les enfants au ski et sachant que tout le canton de Vaud prenait congé, nous avons eu l'idée d'aller en France pour éviter la cohue sur les pistes... en ignorant bien-sûr que toute la région parisienne se trouvait aussi en vacances!!


Bref, malgré ce tourisme de masse ce fût quand même de chouette vacances passées dans la station de Tignes située dans le parc national de la Vanoise en Savoie. La station est d'ailleurs voisine de Val d'Isère où se tenait la coupe du monde de ski 2009. Nous avons assisté au cortège du trafic de retour lors de notre monté vers la station..

Voici quelques chiffres de Tignes + Val d'Isère:

-10,000 ha de domaine skiable avec 300km de piste
-altitude maximum: 3450m, altitude à la station : 2100m (Tignes), 1550m (Val d'Isère)
-pistes: plus de 150, remontées mécaniques: 89

Quelques dates:
-visite des premiers alpinistes: 1860
-les premiers skieurs: années 1920
-premier remonte pente: 1936
-construction du barrage de Tignes mettant un terme aux projets de village: 1946
-mise à l'eau du barrage et dispersion des villageois: 1952
-première saison officielle: 1957



Les +:

- les "Naturides" qui sont des pistes noires balisées, sécurisées mais non damnées qu'on retrouve un peu partout!
- la bouffe témoignant du savoir faire culinaire français (sauf les mets plus typique savoyard qui sont un peu lourd à mon goût)
- l'école du ski français... les enfants ont bien progressé tout en profitant de leur semaine.


Les -:

- pistes beaucoup trop occupées
- la quantité de neige moyenne considérant l'hiver exceptionnel que connaît l'Europe (nous avons pas vu la même quantité de poudreuse qu'on trouve en ce moment en Suisse)
- soleil pas mal puissant car la station se trouve à plus de 2100m! (apparemment la force des rayons UV s'accroît de 4% par tranche de 300m d'altitude) Ok, j'avoue que la plupart des gens recherchent justement ce soleil d'été en plein hiver.


Ces vacances nous ont aussi permis de (re)confirmer les caractères assez distincts de nos deux enfants:

Laurie: plus posée, méthodique et prudente ... elle progresse tout au long de son séjour pour finir dans les pistes rouges avec ses propres bâtons! Plus sociable, elle en profite aussi pour ce faire une copine ... Je crois qu'elle peut nous accompagné pratiquement partout et ceci après une semaine de cours.


Mathias: voulant excellé dès le départ avec son orgueil et sa fierté bien à lui, il n'aime pas trop l'apprentissage et les leçons du débutant ...par contre une fois ce cap franchi il donne des conseils à sa soeurs et insiste grandement pour me montrer ses prouesses en descente downhill sur toute une pente et ce, en se mettant en boule (ce qui donna une syncope à sa mère).


Voici quelques clichés! (malheureusement pris à partir du téléphone portable)

From Tignes_2009

Laurie avec sa monitrice lors de la remise de médaille.

From Tignes_2009

Kim profitant de son nouveau genou!

From Tignes_2009

La vue du village prise à partir de notre chalet.

From Tignes_2009

Laurie avec ses copains "flocons"

From Tignes_2009

Mathias montrant aussi fièrement sa médaille.

From Tignes_2009

Mathias se reposant des nombreuses descentes.

From Tignes_2009

Ma tentative de ski hors-piste avec mes peaux de phoque et mes fixations adaptées pour mixer ski de rando + descente (je vais essayer de faire un blog sur cette passion qui m'a redonné goût au ski).

From Tignes_2009

Les enfants avant leur dernière journée de cours.

From Tignes_2009

Martin

vacations

The last summer vacation was a bit short, at least relative to the European standard, taking two non-consecutive weeks. However, it is impressive how much variety you have access to in a very short travel time here. It all comes down to distance which seems to be compressed in Europe, and with Switzerland right in the middle of it (at least geographically speaking, since the political integration has not progressed much!), we can enjoy a lot of small weekend getaways.

I can't help but compare this with Canada... when I was about 18, I took a train ride of about 42 hours which took me from Montreal to Regina (roughly 2400 km). During all this time one could only witness two types of landscape (forest and prairie) and a single culture, english canada!

Being totally unfair and bias, this is what I get when looking at all the places I've visited in Europe during my first stay in 2000-2002:

- Algarve in Portugal
- France (Paris, Lyon, the Alpes region, Provence and Côte d'Azur)
- Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Seville, Valence)
- Baviere region in Germany (Munich)
- Italy (Aoste, Piedmont, Lombardie regions)
- England (London, Wales)
- and of course a lot of regions in Switzerland (Romandie, Suisse Alémanique, Tessin)

All these trips offering such a diversity of culture within less than 1000km (except probably south of Spain and Portugal which are a bit further)!

However, now with the kids we are less ambitious ... actually we can reach places within less than 2 hours drive away from home... the exact time before our kids stuck in the car start their rampage! So that is what we did this summer.


Here are some pictures of these trips.

Enjoying the small boat in the lake Du Bourget at Aix-les-Bains.



Here is my mom and sister with the kids while visiting Gstaad.




Eating out at Thoune with my daughter!

From Juillet - Aout 2008 - partie 2

I did also quite a bit of biking .. with my longest ride from Lausanne to Bern or about 100km. My longest ascenscion, I did near Thoune (actually between Thoune and Interlaken) where I climb about 1400m.



Next pics were taken about half way toward Beetenberg and Nierderhorn.



You feel lucky to go through this tunnel knowing the quality of road in Switzerland, it was so dark the only thing visible is the small spot of light at the end of tunnel.








Actually the highest altitude road usually winds upward (lacet in french) quite smoothly... they are not nearly as challenging as city roads I regularly ride in and around Lausanne (I guess the logical explanation to this is related to accessibility during winter). For example, a small road I often take has average slope at 20% that rides up to reach "Les trois Chasseurs" from Pully-la_Rosiaz.

From From-mobile-phone

BTW, the pictures taken while riding are from my 2 Megapixel Nokia6300, not too bad for a mobile phone!


Martin

Gruyères

Ce blog a pris une tournure plus personnelle depuis notre arrivée en Suisse, ceci en grande partie pour tenir au courant ma famille de nos escapades. J'ai donc décidé que ma mère (Normande Lapointe, la mamie assez bien branchée et à la page en ce qui concerne l'internet) qui profite normalement bien de ce blog, pourrait maintentant y contribuer en écrivant un petit blog-photo le temps d'une balade! Je lui cède donc le clavier. (Martin)

Quel plaisir pour moi de relater brièvement notre excursion au château de Gruyère en cette magnifique journée du 2 août 2008, lendemain de la fête nationale suisse ! Un ciel bleu agrémenté de quelques nuages, une douce brise, de magnifiques montagnes en toile de fond, voilà comment s'amorce notre visite. Des conditions gagnantes, quoi !



Voici une vue du château de Gruyères prise par ma petite-fille Laurie qui, à six ans, manifeste déjà des talents de photographe.



Le château de Gruyères est un des plus prestigieux de Suisse, il est perché sur une colline dans un paysage verdoyant au coeur des Préalpes fribourgeoises (à 830 m d'altitude). Il domine la cité médiévale de Gruyères (nom qui dérive de la grue héraldique). L'histoire dit que 19 comtes y ont habité du XIe au XVIe siècle. Michel, le dernier comte de Gruyères, connut de grandes difficultés financières et fit banqueroute en 1554. Le territoire fut alors partagé entre les créanciers : les villes de Berne et Fribourg.


En compagnie de ma belle-fille Kim et de mes deux petits-enfants, Laurie et Mathias, nous montons vers le château.



On est presque arrivés... Voici le passage et les fortifications du Belluard, accès principal de la cité de Gruyères
Nous franchissons les portes.


En famille, devant une partie du Calvaire qu'on aperçoit à moitié derrière.


Au coeur de la petite place en bas du château... devant Le Chalet, maison qui a été construite ailleurs et récupérée ici.



Mathias devant une ouverture qui nous donne un aperçu des montagnes environnantes.



Quel visage radieux ! Le clocher de l'église de Gruyères nous apparaît derrière Mathias.

Vue de la montagne sous un autre angle.


Laurie fait une petite moue, le paysage est toujours époustoufflant.



Laurie, heureuse dans les bras de son père.



A l'intérieur du château, elle se prend pour un chevalier.



Nous voici dans la salle des baillis. Le château fut le siège des baillis fribourgeois de 1555 à 1798, après la faillite du dernier comte de Gruyères. Ceux-ci y ont laissé leur marque en aménageant des intérieurs baroques.


Mathias et Laurie sur le poêle en catelles (tuiles en céramique dans le langage populaire suisse-romand).


Laurie prend des airs de comtesse !


Une galerie avec vue... Le cours d'eau derrière moi est la rivière Sarine, bassin du lac de la Gruyère artificiellement créé suite à la construction du barrage de Rossens, donnant naissance au plus jeune lac de toute la Suisse!


Nous nous promenons dans le jardin français aménagé derrière le château.


La belle Kim, en plein centre ville.


Notre visite tire à sa fin. Nous flânons encore un peu dans la rue bordée de magasins de souvenirs et de restaurants. On est ravis de notre visite mais on a le sentiment d'avoir à peine effleuré des siècles d'histoire.
Peut-être reviendrons-nous un jour...

Normande

Thermalp Ovronnaz

Ce weekend j'avais réservé une journée surprise pour ma petite vieille! Et oui Kim a eu 38 ans la semaine passée et avec tout ce stress accumulé avec les années, rien de tel qu'une fin de semaine passée aux bains thermales accompagnée de soins divers!

Le site d'Ovronnaz se trouve à une heure de la maison en prenant l'autoroute qui longe le Rhône dans le Valais.

Petite parenthèse écolo:

• Dans le Valais, on croise les plus puissantes éoliennes de la Suisse, fait assez rare en Suisse car le pays commence à peine à développer ce secteur. Il faut dire que les grands vents se trouvent plus en altitude et que j'imagine assez bien l'opposition des gens à gâcher ces magnifiques paysages alpins avec de gros ventilateur! La zone située à Collonges est particulièrement bien placée car il y a un phénomène de vent constant dû à l'encaissement de la vallée. La vallée du Valais située entre les plus hautes montagnes de la Suisse a d'ailleurs des caractéristiques météorologiques très différentes du plateau de la Suisse, comme le foehn et son très faible taux de pluviométrie (même quantité de pluie que Barcelone). D'ailleurs, j'ai bien remarqué ce minuscule plan d'eau qui semble idéal pour la planche à voile.... je vais peut-être considéré une reprise de ce sport qui n'est pas évident à pratiquer autour de l'arc lémanique. Le Léman est plutôt une cuvette avec peu de vents thermiques contrairement à d'autres lacs dans les alpes comme le lac de Côme.

Les enfants nous ont forcément rejoint plus tard dans la journée avec comme espoir de se baigner dans le "gros bain en forme de piscine".





Quant à moi, je me suis aussi réservé un peu de "détente" en grimpant les petites routes qui montent en laçais vers les haut sommets autour du village d'Ovronnaz! La monté fût assez pénible mais l'arrivée en valait le détour.






Je me suis finalement arrêté à la buvette Loutze à plus de 1700 mètres d'altitude. Je me sens maintenant prêt pour un vrai col!!





Martin