Tophe Adventures

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Toby Kaar in Bourkes

Class gig last thursday ( 14 September 2012 ) in Bourkes, with a Toby Kaar in great form...

Mirror view

Toby Kaar ...

You can listen to his sound there : http://breakingtunes.com/tobykaar
and on soundcloud : http://soundcloud.com/tobykaar

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Once more this september we are greeted by a gorgeous weather, so yesterday afternoon, it was head down to the Beach ( Lahinch for a change ) to see if i could improve my body-boarding skills ( I did not ) and do more picture coverage with the GoPro camera.
Not the biggest waves, but it was all fun under a gorgeous sun :D.

Ready to go

Gorgeous sun over the surf

Happy days on the water

Happy days on the water

The semi-pro

Pre-wipeout

The pro

Time to leave ...

Back to the land

Busy day in Lahinch

UPDATE: unedited raw footage

Raw footage bodyboard from Christophe G on Vimeo.

Monday, September 03, 2012

Electric Picnic 2012 - Day 3

On the final day, I spent a lot more time in the Body & soul area, enjoying the sun, starting with a concert from Eleventy-four - which I had previously seen in Bourkes. An amazing choir entertained us in the afternoon, before I catch up with some Tipperary friends.

Marking the end of 3 beautiful days

Eleventy-four on Body and Soul main stage.

ELBOW (main stage)

Main Stage .. pack on sunday

Bat for lashes

the killers

The Killers

Artists Seen:

The Killers
Bat for lashes
Elbow
Dublin Gospel Choir
The Bambit
Eleventy four

Electric Picnic 2012 - Day 2

On the second day I had my eye on the cure who did not disappoint me.
The day started very well with a full string orchestra playing the full "Dark Side of the moon" in a stunning fashion, before wrapping up with some tune from Stevie Wonder.

God is an astronaut

SBTRKT

The Cure

Bringing your kid to a classic

The Cure

Artists Seen:

Trinity Orchestra
God is an Astronaut
Tieranniesaur
Wild Beast
SBKRT
The Cure
Bell X1

Electric Picnic 2012 - Misc

So in the end it was the best thing ever. The weather was brilliant. The bands were fantastic. I saw the Cure for the first time, along with Sigur Ros. I bumped randomly into friends once in a while of the weekend, only to loose sight of them on the crowd hours later.

Did we mention the weather was brilliant? And the people and the artist, the food....

Sorry if you weren’t there !

Violonist

The Salty Dog .... stranded

recycling in EP

Play some tunes

Tree fruits in Body and soul area

under the sun in the Body and soul area

Relaxing in the body and soul area.

Body and Soul Area

EP main stage

Electric Picnic 2012 - Day 1

So in 2012, I finally set foot in the Electric Picnic ( http://electricpicnic.ie/ ) , the yearly Irish music festival held in Stradbally Hall.
After setting camp in the morning - I arrived quite early, avoiding all the traffic, people had promised me - i went for a quick around the place, even found the salty dog.
The first band was on the main stage: Alabam Shakes ... good, but as I enter a tent I got stunned by the performance of a fuming "Willis Earl Beal".
The first day finished with the XX tremendous and an unexpected volcanic and eruptive performance from Sigur Ros to close the night.

Willis Earl Beal

Willis Earl Beal

Roots Manuva

The XX

Sigur Ros

Artists Seen

Alabama Shakes
Willis Earl Beal
Roots Manuva
Grizzly Bear
Grandaddy
The Jezabels
???
The XX
Sigur Ros
Ed Sheeran ( only the end with a tremendous version of "Chasing Car"

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Work.... What the feck do I do ...

Once in a while, somebody asks me : "What do you do for a living ?" ....

And they usually meant what do you in front of a computer, outside of tweeting and posting on Facebook....
Well my job does indeed consists of spending loads of time in front of a computer screen.

My work station in the Irish office.

But to do what, you should ask... well for the past almost 10 years, I have been a Physical Integration Engineer. Very pompous title indeed, but basically it's one of the fundamental part in chip design.

First a bit of generic background on how electronic chips are made ( http://www.intel.com/about/companyinfo/museum/exhibits/sandtocircuits/index.htm ) :

As for my part the physical integration - or layout -, it does the translation of the system description in some programming language into a graphic representation (the layout) which will be used to produce the chip in the factory. Or: Chip design involves migrating a design from the logical realm (front-end design) to the
physical realm (back-end design).

The microelectronic chip are made of tiny - and getting tinier as the years passes - transistors, laid out on a silicon sheet. The process used involve photolithograhy - very similar to the development on photographic films - and used masks. Which masks I am helping creating.

An inverter and it's layout equivalent

When I started I was doing Analog Layout, so the conversion progress was highly manual, as someone put it, drawing rectangles of different colors representing the different layers ( or mask ) which were going to create the transistors and connections. Somehow i always found that it had some artistic touch, and I have to say most of the good very experienced engineers I met in that field were crazy - to some extend.
The job can also lead to some Chip Art. Sadly i have no pictures of the doodles I may or may not have inserted in past chips.

Since I moved to Digital stuff, where actually some program do layout the rectangles for you, and you're controlling those programs ( or trying to ). The idea here is to automate as much as possible the layout process, and ensuring the timing and other rules are respected.
The basic knowledge how mask design, and what are the physical impacts is still needed, but the tasks there are more programming or at least scripts writing, not too offense the software people.