Alexandre R.J. Francois

American Guild of Organists concert at the Arlington Street Church, part of the 2008 First Night Boston festivities. Today's stair number: 1

Ceiling in one of the reading rooms at the Boston Library. Today's stair number: 4

The Webcam computer vision project is now available on Mac OS X. Picture: Haar face detection demo, using Intel OpenCV library , applied to my blog picture. Today's stair number: 2

Spiral staircase dressed up as a spiral array, complete with pitches, key, center of effect and trajectory. Today's stair number: 1

Back to Caffe Bella Vita . This time, the tiramisu was gone to fast, only the cappuccino was left for a picture. Today's stair number: 1

WPA wireless now works . Web browsing, including Blogger and Gmail, work fine. The controls book-mode configuration do not really work: no way to point and click, and no remapping of buttons in portrait orientation. Today's stair number: 1

The Harvard Yard is very quiet and peaceful (and cold). Today's stair number: 3

Thick on the trees. Today's stair number: 2

Our little bench looks like it is sinking in the snow! Today's stair number: 2

Against the crisp blue sky. Today's stair number: 1

It is really starting to feel like Christmas in the Cambridge Commons. Today's stair number: 1

It snowed from the wee hours of the morning, late into the night. Tomorrow, it will look like this (trust me...) Today's stair number: 0

The XO laptop comes with very little printed documentation out of the box. It took me a while to figure out how to open it without breaking anything. I learnt from the OLPC wiki that I cannot use my WPA encrypted Airport wireless out of the box. I had to get to the office to find a proverbial "linksys" open network in close range, and be able to surf the web and check my email on Gmail. By the way, that worked quite well. Back at home, I had ample time to decipher this somewhat cryptic but undeniably central message, which occupies a whole sheet of paper in the sparse printed documentation, and comes up every time the machine shuts down. I really feel I am being educated... Today's stair number: 1

My own XO laptop ! I hope the lucky kid who gets the donated one is as excited as I am! Today's stair number: 5

The sign reads: "Due to winter conditions please use center steps." (just in case we could not figure it out ourselves...) Today's stair number: 1

Harvard Square under a foot of snow and crisp blue skies. Today's stair number: 1

Fresh Pond partially frozen. Today's stair number: 1

It's just beautiful. Almost a foot total, and there's more to come! Today's stair number: 1

Almost a foot of snow, and still going strong! Today's stir number: 1

1991-1992. Today's stair number: 2

Very cool BMOP Club Concert, hosted by, and featuring the work of, fellow Radcliffe Fellow Lisa Bielawa. Today's stair number: 1

... just very cold! Today's stair number: 1

The branches are covered with ice. Today's stair number: 1

Wonderful performance by the Harvard Contemporary Dance Ensemble, featuring fellow Radcliffe Fellow Christine Dakin. Today's stair number: 6

...and cold! Today's stair number: 2

Proposal complete, uploaded, and ready to submit! Today's stair number: 1

It seems only yesterday that I took a similar picture on one of our very first few days in Cambridge. In 3 months, we have had only 4 or 5 rainy days, and only recently some freezing temperatures and this beautiful snow! Today's stair number: 2

Too busy working on a proposal to take pictures, so here is a snapshot of the Stormwind Cathedral I took some time ago in World of Warcraft. Today's stair number: 1

More snow than I have seen in years! Apparently, it's only the beginning, and I hear it gets a old after the first 3 months. But for now, it's just great! Today's stair numebr: 5

This is the first snow that stays. The streets are white! Today's stair number: 1