Alfredo Li Pira

We used to be a regular patron of Flo in rue des Petit-Ecuries, having first dined there a number of years ago, but since early 2009 the quality has been going steadily downhill, to the point of making it deserve a negative recommendation. The location is still stunning, one of the few “authentic” fin de siecle brasseries in Paris. But, the service is consistently bad (although one could argue this is within the “Parisian standard” for service) and, what’s worse, the quality of the food has decreased to the point of being unacceptably bad. Perhaps this is due to its being transformed into a tourist attraction, with the number of foreign diners having clearly overwhelmed the locals in recent years. Last I was there we ordered a “plateau des fruits de mer” and the crab (which is one of my favorite treats!) was simply rotten, with a smell that clearly betrayed its old age. I did not make a scene because the company I was with, I simply left it aside. And decided I will never visit the place again.

• 7, cour des Petites-Ecuries, Paris, France +1.47.70.13.59

http://www.flobrasseries.com/brasseries/index.asp?brasserie=5 

We wanted to have a good cheese fondue, no more and no less, and Pan Vin Fromages delivered it with high marks. The fondue was creamy and tasty, with high quality ingredients. The cheese platter we ordered afterward was also of good quality and well assorted, as it was the charcuterie platter we shared as entree (OK, we certainly ate too much!). The dessert unfortunately was not on a par with the rest, acceptable but nothing more than this. Service is efficient, the place is run by two brothers who are maintaining a pleasant atmosphere while running it effectively. Portions for the fondue are somewhat small (but this is stated in the menu, hence you are warned) and the cheese platter was a bit pricey (although, again, good). If are into cheese and don’t mind to spend a little bit more than average, it’s well worth a visit.

• Pain Vin Fromage, 3 rue de Geoffroy, 75004 Paris, France, +33.1.42.74.07.52

http://www.painvinfromage.com/fr/index.htm

Finding good restaurants in Paris  is not that difficult. Finding good restaurants with good service is a challenge. Marty is one of the few ones among the several we tried that meets the challenge. Actually, service is, for Parisian standard, excellent. I imagine this is largely due to being an “owner-run” restaurant, and it shows. I have seen the owner quietly and discretely have a word with waiters that did not perform.

The food is traditional Parisian cuisine, consistently good, even if sometimes it lacks a little extra edge and may be a little bland on occasion. Shellfish and oysters are good, and good value (again for Parisian prices). On occasion we had the owner suggesting us fresh stuff not on the menu (such as for example fresh mushrooms), and it was worth it.

The wine list is well balanced, and you can order quite nice wines by the glass or by the pitcher.

The art deco atmosphere is nice, traditional but well kept, and the place is, in a word, reliable. Specially on weekends reservations are advisable. They have valet parking.

All in all is a quite nice experience, and as a result we have become regular patrons of Marty.

Brasserie Marty, 20 av. des Gobelins, 75005 Paris, France. +33.1.43.31.39.51 

http://www.marty-restaurant.com/

From today I am starting a “restaurant guide”. For my job I travel more than I care to, and I eat out more than I should (or would like to). I will start from today to put up restaurant reviews. The two places I eat out most in are Paris and London, so most reviews will deal with restaurants in these cities. However it will by far not limited to this, and it will cover a number of destinations around the world. Enjoy the reviews and feel free to comment in any way!I will use a “5 stars systems” , roughly meaning:

• 1 star: stay away from the place!
• 2 stars: poor, but still survivable
• 3 stars: average, nothing to write home about but honest
• 4 stars: very good to excellent
• 5 stars: memorable

Roberto Perotti, “L’università truccata”, Einaudi 2008

Un libretto breve ed agile, anche se scritto male (ma perché le case editrici italiane non hanno gli “editors”?), che fa il punto sull’Università italiana, proponendo come via d’uscita dal pantano in cui la stessa cerca di navigare, le stesse ricette di cui discutiamo con gli amici ricercatori emigrati da anni: ovvero abolizione del valore legale del titolo di studio, abolizione del concorso, abolizione della gratuità dell’istruzione universitaria (compensata da un vero sistema di borse), ed un sistema in cui le risorse seguano la qualità. Una ricetta tutto sommato “banale”, nel senso che la si può riassumere nell’anglosassonizzazione dell’università, poco più che l’applicazione del sistema UK/USA all’Italia. Una parte consistente del libro consiste nell’analizzare e smontare una serie di miti su cui riposa la retorica nazionale (soprattutto quella di sinistra), miti con cui viene pervicacemente difeso il sistema attuale: ad esempio che il problema dell’università italiana è la cronica mancanza di fondi (falso, la spesa per studente in corso è la quarta nel mondo, equivalente a quella svedese e circa il 50% più di quella francese), che i docenti italiani sono pagati malissimo (falso, sono pagati malissimo i ricercatori di prima nomina, ma la progressione salariale automatica li rende presto meglio pagati dei loro equivalenti inglesi), che nonostante la povertà l’università italiana produca consistentemente ricerca di eccellente livello (falso, sia usando indicatori bibliografici che altri approcci le università italiane sono consistentemente in fondo alle classifiche). Ma questi miti sono pervicacemente propagati da tutti i ministri, destri e sinistri, che li usano come ottime scuse per non attaccare i problemi di fondo del sistema e fare invece una riforma inutile dopo l’altra, cambiando il sistema dei concorsi ogni tre anni. Il libro ha anche alcuni elementi ameni, come quando ricostruisce con minuzia la ragnatela di parentele che lega fra loro i docenti di alcune università (l’ateneo di Bari è preso ad esempio) dove sembra sia pratica consolidata l’assunzione di figli, coniugi, nipoti e parenti vari.

Tutto sommato interessante in quanto permette di discutere con un po’ più di numeri alla mano. Deprimente in quanto è perfettamente chiaro che nessuno avrà mai il coraggio di affrontare il problema alla radice.

I have started to use Aperture 1.5 with “managed master files”, i.e. with all the photos stored in the Aperture library. Maximum simplicity, apparently. However, this has quickly become unwieldy. With more than ten thousand photographs, the Aperture library has become enormous, backing it up was non trivial, the disk of my MacBook quickly became too small for it, and copying the library from my MacBook to my IMac was a major chore. In fact, one of Aperture’s powerful features is exactly the ability to use reference masters. In this mode the image files are stored anywhere on the file structure, even in offline volumes, while the preview files and all the metadata are stored in the Aperture library.

Referenced masters allow to keep the image files offline and do lots of work using the (now much smaller) library. The previews are plenty good enough to do initial rating of the images, to throw out obvious duds (out of focus images, images with a botched composition, etc.). Also, for keywording and the like previews are more than adequate. So I now keep the image files on an external disk, and carry the Aperture library on the MacBook. Nice setup.

Relocating the masters, however, was a painful process: in principle this should be easy: select the images to relocate (in principle one can select the whole Aperture library), select “relocate masters” from the menu, and wait for Aperture to go through the process. Easy enough — in principle… In practice, Aperture did crash midway through the process, leaving a couple of images in a funny state, so that I had to reimport the originals, etc. and start the whole process (yes, I had made a complete backup of the Aperture library prior to embarking in the process).

It took me the best part of an evening to understand what the problem was, and to find a solution. I did try to work systematically, by trying to identify the culprit image files. To do that, I bisected the library and tried to relocate only one half. Each time it crashed I had to make sure nothing was compromised and begin again.

In the end I found the problem: I had accidentally imported some images twice in Aperture, so that I had some duplicates. Aperture does not like this — obviously upon relocation it tries to write the same image files twice in the same location with the same name, and rather than producing an error message or something, it just crashes — at a critical time, leaving the library in a corrupted state. No good…

The solution is simple: just ensure that you have no duplicate image files prior to relocating masters. Once I removed all duplicates, the process run smoothly. Since this episode, I always check the “Do not import duplicates” checkbox in the import dialogue.

I have not seen this bug discussed anywhere else on the net. I hope my experience would prevent some woes to other people… While I like Aperture, version 1.5 is much more crash prone than I find acceptable…

Couldn’t resist the temptation to get a Canon G9 in Tokyo. Price was simply too good to let it pass, and it’s since I have given up film that I have been looking for a carry around camera which looks, feels and acts as a real camera and not as a sluggish toy. The G9 is the best approximation to what I have been looking for that I found so far. Not that I miss gear, I have my Nikon D200, my Nikon D70 and tons of lenses. Thus, when I feel like lugging around stuff I have plenty of camera. But I really would like something to bring around in my pocket, or in my briefcase on an everyday basis, something I can use to take real pictures, and which does not need 20 seconds to start up, and 10 seconds to focus. In fact, I wanted something I could set in full manual mode, so that for example I can focus at the hyperfocal distance and shoot with minimal or no delay (hopefully!), without the silly autofocus trying to “hunt” for a subject.

Well, I have been pleasantly surprised with the G9. It’s close to what I want — not fully there yet, but pretty close. You will find plenty of detailed reviews about the G9 on the net, which I will not try to reproduce it here. I will just relay some of my personal experiences with the camera.

Let’s get the gripes out of the way. I agree with most reviewers that 12 megapixels is more than one should try to fit on such a small sensor, and I would happily trade some resolution for a lower noise. Also, I’d love a lens with manual focus and zoom, rather than be constrained to what the silly “step zoom” the motor allows you, with a small set of pre-set focal lengths. By manual I mean really manual, like a ring to turn. Used to be pretty standard, when cameras where not electric! Thus, it ought to be possible? Manual zooming would be faster and more accurate! Another gripe is that the optical viewfinder is close to useless, the parallax error is so big that it’s hardly worth trying to compose an image using it, except perhaps at the widest angle zoom setting, and even then the framing is not even close. This was a disappointment! Thus, much to my disliking I have resorted to composing pictures on the back display, something I really feel it’s inadequate for a real camera.

But, this said, I have been pleasantly surprised with the overall results and usability of the camera. Picture quality is more than adequate, certainly fully in line with what I would expect from such a small sensor. Image stabilization works really well, and the camera is solidly built, certainly does not feel flimsy. Small enough to carry around, it’s sufficiently unobtrusive to use in context in which people would become either shy or self-conscious in the presence of a big camera (I have noticed that big zooms on DSLR tend to make people rather nervous!). Raw files (which are now read by Aperture with no problems) are a big plus, and help improve picture quality quite a bit. The back display is of excellent quality, and even in full daylight it remains usable.

All in all, the camera has allowed me to capture a number of shots I would not have gotten, simply because one cannot walk around carrying a DSLR everywhere, if for no other reason that one’s back would soon resent it! And, given that in the end a camera should be all about pictures, the shortcomings are, in my opinion, more that offset from the usability, size factor and overall image quality. Not perfect, granted, but certainly good.

Just as an example, this is a picture I shot on a Dutch beach in a sunny winter day. Again, not bad for such a small camera. Of course the resolution is significantly downscaled for publishing it on the web.