Amazing Melody Gardot
Like many, I discovered Melody Gardot through her second album "My One and Only Thrill" and immediately took to her soft voice and elegant style.
Last night, Fabienne and I had the opportunity to go and listen to her on stage, at the Théâtre du Léman in Geneva. And oh boy, is it a different experience. Melody Gardot reveals herself on stage! On her last album "The Absence" she claims to take you on a musical voyage around the world, from Paris to Brazil, and Lisboa to Trinidad. But the truth is (for me) she really takes you in her world when you see her perform on stage!
Amazing
Surrounded by a band of exceptional musicians, she mashes up styles and rythms to paint a confused world of delight. She revisits her own songs to share them with you in such a way that you rediscover them entirely. She really takes on on a musical trip.
Her band is composed of Irwin Hall on saxophone and Stephan Braun on cello, Chuck Staab on drums and I can't remember the names of the guitarist of the bass. They are all truly amazing musicians. Thank you all for an astounding performance!
Once again, you can't beat a live performance. That is when the magic really happens. Don't miss her if she comes near you.
Checkout her YouTube videos of follow her on Twitter.
Squarespace 6 localisation
I don't know about you, but I am hearing a lot about Squarespace these days, either at conferences or as a podcast sponsor, and I decided to evaluate v6 from an internationalisation angle.
Squarespace shines as a CMS. Really. Its approach to designing layouts and organising pages is amazing. The templates you have to choose from are very well designed, and you can customise most of it from the client interface. I won't go into the details her, but you can find numerous reviews elsewhere.
It felt as the perfect solution for those small budget websites projects. Build on an existing template with the client to meet their needs and expectations. Sounded great.. until you get to the localisation issues.
I didn't expect Squarespace to offer an localised version of their admin interface, but I did expect them to take into account the website's localisation settings set in “Time / Geography”.
As from I can see, this is only used in the lang parameter of the html element. I would expect them to use it to format the blog's dates and times and to initialise the YUI 3 Library Y.config.lang variable. But sadly, no.
Typically, the Calendar widget (template block) couldn't be used on a French site:
So, I tried to figure out what could be done via CSS and JavaScript. There are a number of similar request in Squarespace's forum for translation of the basic wording and date formating used in the blog, but very few answers.
Code injection
The following snippets work on the Template “Five” and have not been tested on the others. Your mileage may vary depending on their markup…
I first tried to set the correct localisation (French) for JavaScript widgets such as the Calendar by injecting code into the main page header (situated in Settings > Code Injection):
<script>
Y.use("lang/datatype-date-format_fr-FR",
function(Y) {
Y.Intl.setLang("datatype-date-format", "fr-FR");
}
);
</script>
Unfortunately, this only translates the month name, not the short weekdays which remain in English, so I added a line of CSS to hide them:
/*
Hide YUI3 Calendar weekdays
*/
table.yui3-calendar-grid thead {
display:none;
}
The Calendar widget looked acceptable now for a French public:
This approach didn't have any effect on the blog entry dates. I wrote a small JavaScript snippet injected into the page footer to basically translate the month name and change the format from <month day, year> to <day month year>.
<script>
/* List of months in French */
var month = new Array(12);
month[0] = "janvier";
month[1] = "février";
month[2] = "mars";
month[3] = "avril";
month[4] = "mai";
month[5] = "juin";
month[6] = "juillet";
month[7] = "août";
month[8] = "septembre";
month[9] = "octobre";
month[10]= "novembre";
month[11]= "décembre";
Y.use('node', 'node-load', function(Y) {
Y.on('domready', function() {
/* (1) Reformat blog entries published dates */
Y.all('time.published').each(
function() {
var pdate = new Date(this.getAttribute('datetime'));
this.setHTML(pdate.getDate() + " "
+ month[pdate.getMonth()] + " "
+ pdate.getFullYear());
}
);
});
});
</script>This hack worked nicely for plain dates, but not for blog listings where Squarespace uses “time since” dates like “3 months ago”, so I substituted that string with the blog entry's date with the following snippet:
/* (2) Replace time since strings with published dates */
Y.all('time.timestamp').each(
function() {
var tdate = new Date(this.getAttribute('datetime'));
this.setHTML(tdate.getDate() + " "
+ month[tdate.getMonth()] + " "
+ tdate.getFullYear());
}
);
String substitution
Similarly, you can replace specific words/sentences by their French counterpart via JavaScript code injection in the footer:
- Share -> Partagez
- Read more -> Continuer à lire
Y.all('.ss-social-button').setHTML('Partagez');
Y.all('.inline-read-more').setHTML('Continuer à lire');
A blog entry will then look like this:
The CSS still needs to be tweaked, but we are getting closer to what I expected.
Developer Platform
Version 6 offers a Developer Platform which enables you to create your own Squarespace template from scratch. Morevoer, it is completely free until you are ready to publish so get started! Kudos for that. Unfortunately, you can't edit the template blocks (yet, says the documentation), so the same hacks apply.
Keep in mind we are hacking your way to a solution, this code will have to be removed once Squarespace formats dates according to the user's settings.
Our short stay at the Hotel Eden in Chamonix
It is not easy finding a “good” hotel or a restaurant in a town you are not familiar with. There are a number of services out there designed to help you do just that but sometime fail short because places change, but user comments remain.
I faced this issue back in the late 90'ties when I maintained the Geneva RestoGuide. The idea was to collect individual experiences on eating out in Geneva at one point in time. A time machine of experiences rather than a starred average. Trust in time is difficult to manage. Anyway, let's not segway to far off topic…
Our skiing season came to a close this weekend with a couple of days in Chamonix. We took advantage of the fact that Good Friday is not a religious holiday in France, and decided to booked a couple of nights in the Hotel Eden near Chamonix.
I checked Booking.com for last minute offers and found the Hotel Eden. It had good write ups on the major traveling websites and it had a “large suite” sleeping 5 adults available for our dates. Splendid. I booked immediately.
The following day, I spent more time browsing through the reviews and realised that most of the good ones were over a year old and that the ratings had dropped significantly since the change of owners. “Bummer” I thought, and felt I had been duped by the averaging system once more.
Nevertheless, our stay was very good, and this is why I'm writing this blog entry as well as leaving positive comments on other sites. Places change, owners change, people change, mindsets change. Hell, the world changes… we might as well keep an open mind about it.
The short story is that new owners took over the Hotel Eden early 2012 and weren't fluent in French. Most of the negative comments I read relate to that specific point. My personal experience, a year later denies it. The owners do speak French, and English, and Russian and maybe more languages. They are welcoming and friendly. The place is clean and well maintained. The bar is a good place to chill out after a day out in the mountains. The restaurant is worth the trip on its own. It offers a mix of French cuisine à-la-Thaï which is amazing. The products are fresh and superbly prepared. I have nothing negative to say about the restaurant. We ate there both evenings.
The hotel is not located in the town of Chamonix, but a couple of kilometers out. Too far to walk there and back in bad weather, but it must be a pleasant walk in the Summer. The bus stop is 50m away and drops you off in town and at the main télépheriques. The Flégère téléphérique is only a 100m away.
All this to say that things aren't always what they seem, and individual negative comments can mask a genuine effort to adapt, to offer a new service or a new way of doing things.
We really enjoyed our stay at the Hotel Eden despite the impressive snow falls that weekend and the bad weather conditions that prevented us from skiing up high.
Back to work now.
Currently playing in iTunes: Nothing Compares 2 U by Jimmy Scott
Just Smile
Yes, once again it's been awhile since I last posted anything. So here's a picture to make you just smile while I get my act together again.
Reverse-engineering the algorithms of romance
How I Gamed Online Data to Meet My Match: Amy Webb at TEDxMidAtlantic 2012
Maria Popova picked Amy Webb's book “Data, a True Love Story” in Brain Pickings. This is how I discovered her TEDx presentation.
Added to my reading list.
