This is the 21st century. Not so long ago, that number was synonymous with science-fiction. The world was changing slowly enough that it would take a century for things to become fully weird and enhanced to the point of seeming magical.

Now our science-fiction horizon has shrunk to a few decades. And even as I write this, new discoveries are made and technologies released that make the present amazingly fleeting and regularly spark flashes of wonders and magic in real-time.

However, with a shorter fiction span, our capacity for amazement has also diminished. We are becoming dulled by all this extraordinary stuff we get bombarded with on a daily basis and things that maybe should leave us in awe barely register as cool and not bad.

In the techie news these days, two headlines have caught my attention. The first one is the release by Google of its beta web browser, Chrome. That Google should take such an avenue is hardly surprising. The web has become a superpower, taking an increasingly central place in our society; anybody smart - and the Google team obviously is - would decide that to better control such potential, one needs to diversify (check), innovate to capture the attention of a bored public (check), become better at what they do than anybody else (check), and offer not only tools, but the entire toolshed, complete with a roof, power supply and lighting. In comes Chrome. Check.

Claiming to be faster-than-any-other-browser-period, Google’s newcomer also features the company’s now legendary searching simplicity and more important yet, it takes a very large step towards independent web applications and the eventual - by unavoidable - complete bypass of operating systems (yeah, you can read Windows here, and not so between the lines) in favor of a fully sustainable web-based environment.

Chrome is only in its beta phase, of course. Lots remains to be said and done and bugs are very present, like a major incompatibility with Window Blinds which for now makes Chrome useless to me. But Firefox is feeling the heat and will issue a 3.1 release that aims at countering Chrome’s speed advantage. In any case, make no mistake about it: this is History in the making.

Then there’s Google’s (yes, them again) Picasa Web Albums latest innovation. You might have heard of face recognition technology; if you own a decent and recent point-and-shoot camera, the odds are you’re using it daily, knowingly or not. It detects human faces in a shot and allows the camera to focus and expose selectively. Picasa, being an online photo gallery system, obviously doesn’t have a need for focusing pictures. Instead, the design team has chosen to focus on labeling, which after all, is one of Google’s major strengths (think of Gmail’s very convenient labels).

So how does face recognition technology come into play within Picasa? Easy. Upon first use, the site scans your entire collection of photo albums, searching for faces and patterns. The process takes a few minutes, after which you are served probable matches, in groups of 5 to 15 or so pictures, of the same person. (Granted, I’m not the ideal test user because my Picasa albums feature predominantly... the same person.) Still. It bloody works. So all I had to do for most of these groups of pictures was assign a name tag to them, new or chosen from my contact list (uh-uh, Google’s tentacles already span many an application). That’s it. Fast and efficient. And from now on, Picasa will analyze the pictures I upload and scan them for faces, which if found, will trigger a rectangle overlay on the head and a prompt to tag, suggesting probable matches.

At that point, I have to take a deep breath. This is like being inside science-fiction itself. We’re not talking about a high-end covert application, here. This is for you and me. Millions of you and me. And it’s brought to you by Google.

Which reminds me: when Gmail first came out, its very essence yielded much controversy; the fact that every single message you ever wrote or received would be stored online and search-able by Google’s sophisticated algorithms caused much concern about privacy. Then the storm passed, mostly because people liked Gmail more than they disliked the vulnerability it implied. It’s a sign of times. Our notion of personal privacy has to be - and is - changing because whether we like it or not, in a world ruled by information and communications, there can be no such thing as complete privacy. We just have to live with it. And better ourselves so that the fear of seeing our secrets exposed diminishes. In a sense, Google and the like are for modern society what the church was in the past: a strong motivation not to sin, or else.

Now let’s get back to Picasa, and let me be the devil’s advocate for a moment. Millions of users. Billions of portraits analyzed, tagged and associated with email addresses and further contact info... Need I say more? What an incredible database for Big Brother to tap into. Because let’s face it, criminals own cameras too. You rob a 7-Eleven, the security cameras record your face. Police can’t come up with a match, only being able to search through criminal records, official ID’s and whatever other sources they have. BUT. What if they could search the Picasa database???

Sure, I know, they can’t. Oh but wait a minute. The privacy policies of such online services as Google promise to protect yours, unless required by law or to assist enforcement of said law. Oops. Big Brother 1. Visitors 0.

Still. What a cool toy for those of us who will be geeks before being afraid.

In this very dark hour, I have chosen not to dwell on the difficulty of the moment - because in the end I am still the luckiest guy on Earth - but rather to concentrate on things that inspire me. Well, I just found one.

I have never been too impressed by macro photography and usually find bugs creepy. I know a cat who eats them. But there are people who photograph them, with various degrees of success. The following has made me rethink everything I thought I knew about macro photography and reevaluate the definition of « impossible ». In order not to steal the guy’s images, I’m linking below to 4 pages of his gallery with frantic enthusiasm and I hope you will take the time to browse, either through my selections or his.

If I ever caught a glimpse of photographic genius, this is one. I can only dream of some day managing to get results that would be a tenth as amazing as these. From what I gather, he shoots at dawn in the fall and uses bellows and either an enlarger lens or a standard 50mm lens that he doesn’t even reverse. I hear that people also get good results with the Canon MP-E 65mm Macro lens, but that’s out of my league. And then, where does one buy a few ounces of genius?

Here’s the work of Martin Amm from Germany. Kudos.

Once in a while I run into something I really like, a service, a product, a piece of software, a recipe, a movie, something. And then I plug it. Not for the rewards, not for the fame, not for attention but just because I think a compliment costs me nothing and goes a long way. So the opinions expressed hereby are mine solely and most likely biased. After all, I’m from the south of France where objectivity is often replaced by passionate enthusiasm and colorful language.

A few weeks ago, my sister sent me the link to BetterWorld.com, an online used book reseller with a conscience. I visited them, did a few searches, found an old book I hadn’t seen on any shelf in years and years, and ordered it. It was cheap. Used books should be. They shipped cheap too. Free in the US, $2.97 worldwide. My book took a while to arrive, maybe 10 days. So what, I was in no hurry.

Then a few days ago, their follow up email arrived. I read it and smiled. Well done, I thought. Some humour, some shameless self-promotion, nothing out of this world, just a nice touch. I have bought very expensive stuff on the internet for substantial sums, and rarely does the seller bother with following up. Better World Books did, even for the $3.98 purchase I honored them with. That’s what I call good business. I will buy again.

« Hey Vincent,

We’re just checking in to see if you received your order from Better World Books. If your order hasn’t blessed your mailbox just yet, heads are gonna roll in the Mishawaka warehouse! Seriously though, if you haven’t received your order or are less than 108.8% satisfied, please reply to this message. Let us know what we can do to flabbergast you with service.
Before you resume watching cats playing piano (or books discussing their love lives) on Youtube, we’d really appreciate your help with something. We have one question that we’d like to ask: Would you recommend us to a friend? It will take less than one minute, we promise. Please click here for the survey.
If you’ve really got some gumption, there’s one other thing you can do to help. Become our fan on Facebook by clicking this link. It’s the easiest way to let your friends know that you’re part of our movement to fund literacy by buying books.
Humbly Yours,

The Better World Books Automatically Generated E-mailing Robot
email: help@betterworld.com

Order Number: [removed]

Fund literacy, care for the environment, and get a fair price on the books you want.
BetterWorld.com (http://www.BetterWorld.com/)
2 Million Used Books. Free shipping in the USA, $2.97 worldwide.  »

Draw a salad bowl in your head. Throw in, at random, pieces of Google Analytics, Stacounter, ClustrMaps, Geoloc and Skype. Add dressing. Mix well. You’ve got Woopra.

New kid on the trendy block of web statistics, Woopra is another one of those applications that seem to explode into stardom nearly overnight. The concept hasn’t even emerged out of beta testing yet and already, it is the talk of the hour. The design team had planned to steer 250 beta testers into a controlled study; they now have over 25,000. Something must have gone right.

For someone who is currently using Google Analytics - the so far unchallenged leader of the pack - to track their web site traffic and statistics, Woopra will feel both familiar and weird. There are many similarities - after all they tap into pretty much the same data to render their stats - but there are also interesting differences. Let’s start with the interface; anybody familiar with Google products, and Analytics is no exception, knows that their engineers either favour plain, white backgrounds with minimal eye candy, or have something stuck... somewhere. Woopra is the opposite: total pleasure for the eyes, color-rich interface, dark theme. And just as I’ve now turned to Gmail Redesigned for a richer Gmail interface, Woopra hits the spot in the same tones.

Then there’s the very important fact that while Google Analytics and most other similar tools are web-based, Woopra is a desktop application. This has great advantages but also means that the host application needs to be installed on each computer one intends to track from. Worth mentioning, though: Woopra offers a minimalistic web-based mock-up of their stats readout accessible from anywhere online via your account.

Yet another noticeable difference between the two soon-to-be rivals, is the fact that Google Analytics remains very evasive when it comes to singling out individual visitors, concentrating rather on networks, keywords and general traffic. Woopra, on the other hand, approaches the issue like StatCounter does, offering very detailed information about every single visitor in a voyeuristic way that will probably appeal most to low-traffic site webmasters and bloggers.

And here we encounter the most significant difference yet: while Google’s stats are only updated daily, Woopra woops results to you in real time. Visitors to the site are reported just about instantly, and in that aspect, Woopra reminds me of Geoloc and its flashing dots. But things are now pushed one step further: the webmaster is able to initiate a live chat session with anybody currently visiting the site! Are you a blogger from South Africa? You notice a fellow SAfrican visiting your blog, in real time, and you send them a chat offer that appears in their browser, from the « webmaster ». If they accept it, a standard chat window opens up and you are live with your visitor. How cool is that? Maybe not unique, but now coming to the masses.

What else? Oh yes, the downside. Well, for one thing, how do YOU feel about having so much of your personal information revealed and possibly exploited by the webmaster of a site you are visiting, or getting a chat request by said webmaster when you wanted to remain anonymous? Not good? That’s too bad, because it’s been happening for ages. Woopra just makes it more user-friendly. Now what do I mean by personal information? Nothing worth killing for; your (approximate) location, browser version, operating system, screen resolution, language, IP number, point or web site of origin, keywords searched for, duration of your visit, and color of your socks. Well maybe not the color, but whether you are wearing one or two. But not your name, not your email, nor phone number. Not your secret goulash recipe. Nothing you haven’t flashed publicly on the web for years already.

Another problem is that Woopra, probably because of its unexpected and sudden success, is still only allowing sign-ups upon an individual web site approval process that is taking days and sometimes weeks. I waited 2 weeks for mine. Others wave waited for months. But hey, the thing’s still a beta, so I guess we can cut them some slack. And yes, I’ve found a few bugs, and taken a couple of notes of features I think might be important.

But really, in the end, Woopra is fun to play and interact with, or just fun to watch. Will it replace my Google Analytics completely? Time will tell. For now, I’m hooked.

Bon, ‘faut pas craquer, je m’applique. Having not yet achieved the results I was hoping for, which would be nothing short of « divine perfection », I am still regularly experimenting with le flan. Here’s the updated recipe. See also Flan pâtissier - 1er essai for the initial results and full length cooking drama.

The dough hasn’t changed much, but the quantities are now reflecting an overwhelming North American tendency to use the dreaded « cup » as a measuring unit, a nightmarish fact that has kept me on my toes doing intense maths. Here’s the formula for the dough:

• 1.4 cups flour (fun to play with)
• 125 g butter (my favourite)
• a pinch of salt (also called a sprinkle or a dusting of. By me.)
• a pinch of sugar (also called a tease or a sneeze of. By me too.)
• an egg yoke (not to be confused with my flight sim yoke)
• a bit of water (1024 bits of water being equal to a kibibit)
• 120 cl of hope (I’ve increased the dosage, success having been elusive)

« The making of » the dough is available at a reasonable cost, but you can also find it for free in the above mentionned post. I’m getting better at it. It no longer sticks desperately to the counter in a heroic effort to avoid the oven - and I have also perfected my technique when the times comes to lift it up, rolled flat, into the cooking pan. Now, this is very scientific, so pay attention... Since I don’t have a flat and thin mobile surface I could roll the dough on and then lift the whole apparatus and reverse into the pan, I use two clean sheets of paper taped to the counter. When the dough is flat and stretched, I undo the tape, put the pan on top and spin everything upside down. I cracked myself up so hard doing this that I almost dropped the whole thing!

Ok, dough in the buttered pan, pre-cooking is the same as before, I use my thickest spoons as weights to prevent the dough from rising like a balloon!

On to the flan itself. After experimenting with brown sugar, icing sugar and maple syrup, I am back to the basics: plain, normal white sugar. I’ve switched from corn starch to custard powder just because I was out of the former. It’s basically the same stuff, with a bit of salt, flavor and color added. So the flan formula looks like this:

• 1 liter whole milk (I never saw parts only of milk in a store, they must throw them away.)
• 0.8 cups sugar (notice, once again, the scientific precision; it’s not 3/4 cup, it’s 0.8. There.)
• 0.8 cups cornstarch (in this case Bird’s Custer Powder)
• 2 eggs + 2 yokes (the most fun part of the entire recipe being when I get to crack the shells...)
• 2 to 3 tsp pure vanilla extract

Pre-heat the oven to 1.21 jigowatts, or just 375°F. I used to get mixed results when mixing all this, at times ending up with a rather chunky cream but I’ve got it down to a drill. Bring the milk (minus one glass which is used to mix the cornstarch and eggs) and the sugar plus one tsp of vanilla to a boil. While this is happening, mix in a bowl the glass of milk, 2 more tsp of vanilla, the cornstarch and the eggs. I’d love to experiment with electricity but all I’ve got is a hand whip, so I go crazy for a few minutes until I feel like a few more visits to the gym are needed and the mix is unctuous.

When the milk is boily, I pour it into the bowl (and not the other way around) slowly, while whipping lightly to mix it well. Then the whole flan mix goes back into the pot and, over medium fire, is stirred into a thick cream. At times the bottom tends to send chunks up and I then use the whip to beat the crap out of those chunks, with the pan lifted momentarily off the stove. Eventually, the mix is so thick it uncovers the sides of the pot when stirred. That’s my signal. The original recipe said « let it boil for a few seconds », so I do, having no idea of what that does, but it’s fun because I can see the bubbles approaching the surface way before they burst. The things I’ll do to amuse myself.

The flan is poured into the pre-cooked crust and evened out, and stuck in the oven at 375°F. At precisely 35 minutes, I take it out and carefully brush a thin coat of apricot jam onto the surface, and put it back in. 5 minutes later, I switch the oven to broil for another 3 minutes. (This time, distracted by my post, I went to 6 minutes, and those 3 extra minutes made a huge difference; I wanted to avoid the brown patches that look like a skin desease.)

I let the flan cool off for a while, then put it in the fridge to get it to become a little firmer. Voila.

Well, I got sidetracked. Again. In the middle of posting pictures of the recent Victoria whale watching expedition with Marie, I drifted and have just upgraded the South Africa galleries [1] and [2] with the coolest eye-candy, a 3D photo browser called PicLens, by Cooliris. Now this is going to require a small effort on your part (so small, really) if you want to enjoy the full experience, but I guarantee that if you bare with me, it will blow your mind!

So what are we talking about here? Well, until now, I’ve used (and still do on the blog because implementation here isn’t yet an option) the awesome Lightbox 2 Ajax script to display my photos in a slideshow fashion. However, web-based applications are evolving fast and more than ever, it’s about user experience and 3D interfaces. That’s where PicLens comes in: you install a plugin to your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser and voila (voila, but as always, the plugin installation is much faster and easier on Firefox than IE. No sweat for you sorry Internet Explorer users though, it’ll just take a few additional clicks and maybe a browser restart); the plugin transforms each photo gallery into a super-slick 3D photo-browsing interface, completely immersive and fluid.

Now, for those of you who are really lazy and don’t want to install the plugin, you will still get a PicLens mock-up, but without the 3D effect which, I think, is the most amazing part of the trick. So be bold, install the little plugin, it’s a matter of seconds, you can always uninstall later if it doesn’t live up to your expectations. Convinced? Cool. (No, I’m not getting a commission. I just love the gadget!) Click on one of the browser links above to get the plugin and see you soon in the South Africa galleries...

I’ve placed an entry link at the top of each gallery (gallery links above) but once on the gallery page, the mouse hovered over the lower left corner of each thumbnail will also reveal a blue arrow allowing you to start PicLens on that image.

Once in PicLens, have fun! Drag the 3D wall with your mouse to navigate along it, roll your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the wall, click on pictures to enlarge them, navigate in all four directions with your cursor arrows, double-click on an image to get the slideshow in full screen, it’s all very intuitive and mesmerizing.

And of course, if you install the plugin and have Picasa Web Albums, a Flickr account, or even Myspace or Facebook, or Youtube, it’ll work there too! And if you don’t have accounts, you can still do generic searches on those sites and get the effect! Or try a Google Images search.

In case I haven’t convinced you yet, you can watch a video of the 3D effect here. Yeah, I know, I’m biased.

You gotta love Web 2.0.

A nice table by a large, freshly washed window has me staring distractedly at the street. Nine and a half small flowers are towering in a tiny vase in one corner of my little temporary empire, while on the other side the menu and wine list have been left untouched. I know what I wish for in the former and will not be needing the latter.

Repetitive music is hissing out of bad ceiling speakers, trying hard to be funky jazz but merely reaching the disgraceful mark of elevator background noise. People are trickling in, small groups on business lunches, regular singles with a newspaper, an elegant couple here and there, speaking softly. I look at the empty seat at my own table and can’t help but letting out a deep sigh. Soon.

The restaurant occupies the entire length of this older building, one long room flanked on one side by the bar and kitchen counter and lined with 15 or 20 tables of various sizes. At the back, squeezed between an elevated back-alley and more windows, a narrow strip of empty space has been pompously labeled as patio and a few more tables fitted in. Large fans are spinning lazily far above me and I can’t imagine they would do much good in the summer heat. But this is May and while « Je fais ce qu’il me plaît », the outside door still had to be closed to protect a pale skinned lady seated behind me.

Dark red moldings interrupt the otherwise boringly beige walls. The floor is old wood, and so are the tables and the bar, behind and above which a decent collection of bottles reflects the place’s open claim to French-hood. I can make out Pernod, Ricard, Greygoose, Campari and a long range of French wines.

My bouillabaisse arrives. Having sampled it here years ago, I remember not to expect rouille, which to me really defeats the purpose. But it was otherwise good, then, and is again today. Unconventional, but good. Served in a plate that is obviously too shallow to pretend being a soup bowl but too deep for anything else. I don’t like having to fight for my soup. But the saffron makes up for the fight, added to the dish itself when I thought I should go in the rouille.

Passers-by shamelessly help themselves mentally into my plate from the street, eyes hungry and imagination running wild. I can’t blame them. One always wonders. Of course, I’ve eaten at least two better bouillabaisses. One was a recent - and rather anachronistic - feast, cooked in Brooklyn, out of time, out of place, but never out of context since a Frenchie was meeting a French cook at heart.

The other is half-buried underneath a decade of chronic traveling and many layers of sorrow - five at least, according to Kübler-Ross. Somewhere in the old Marseilles, under the shadow of the Bonne Mère basilica, in a dark little resto off the beaten path and with no pretension other than continuing a long established tradition, my father had treated me to an exceptional bouillabaisse, one that might forever serve in my mind as a Reference in the field of fish soups.

It had been brought to our vinyl clothed table in no time, being the only dish on that day’s menu, accompanied by the most succulent rouille and croutons, in a bowl that made dipping a spoon in it as enjoyable as a dive into clear tropical water when one’s skin is burning. The flavour was amazing and without a doubt a direct consequence of the presence of a small fleet of tiny fishing boats, « les pointus », resting in their picturesque harbour a few steep streets below.

We’d talked about anything and everything, refaisant le monde, discussing extreme right politics, the Foreign Legion, planes and airlines and airports, Provence, Pagnol and food. And the past. Remembering the rabbits and chickens slowly roasted à la broche on the open air grill my dad has stoned and cemented in the angle of our small L-shaped garden, endlessly spun around on the spit and lovingly basted with a brush, the necessary herbs having been found fresh a few feet away, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves...

We had tried to catch up, to make up for lost time, to fill a gigantic gap. No one ever can. But trying is what matters. Trying and learning from our mistakes. If only the Chef at Cassis could learn that rouille m-u-s-t accompany bouillabaisse for it to be worth a trip down the memory lane and a glimpse of old Marseilles, through time and space...

It sounds like a movie title. It isn’t. It was a real Monday night, end of a trip and dawn of a week, as so many things in life morph from one into another... We walked east from Cobble Hill, leaving Henry Street behind and following Union Street towards and past the now ritual Gowanus bridge and its nearby strange sidewalk garden, and on to Park Slope. The air was crisp and we moved briskly, looking around us with pleasure, noticing small things like hints of spring and touches of tasteful caring on doorsteps. We turned right on 5th Avenue and kept going for a couple of blocks to the corner of Caroll. And there it was. The odd little lobby stuck out onto the sidewalk, antechamber of Al di Là’s cavern. As we eased through the outer door, we gave way to a lady stepping out while talking on her cell phone: « I don’t think we should eat at Al di Là, she was saying to someone invisible, there’s an hour wait to get a table. » We looked at each other, incredulous. This was Monday night, not Saturday.

But we pushed in, brushing past the heavy curtains that completely isolate the dinning room from the street, and were immediately immersed into the warm ambiance of the place. There stood Emiliano, greeting us and looking a bit discouraged as he smiled apologetically as if to say: « I know what you are going to ask, and you know what I’m going to answer. » We did know, but we asked any way. The room was buzzing with activity, conversations were loud and happy. « About an hour, he said. It’s so busy tonight. You could wait downstairs. » Neither one of us had brought a phone, but we headed downstairs any way, back outside and around the corner, to the low-ceiling little room they use as an overflow dining room, a bar, and a narrow waiting area.

At first, we felt like the last two onions squeezed into an already tightly stuffed turkey. No way to approach the bar, nowhere to sit, the waitresses looking frantic. But we’d been there before. Soon, as people having arrived ahead of us managed to grab a seat here and there, we were able to order our ritual glasses of Prosecco. Having claimed those, we retreated to a corner by the window and stood there toasting to us, and to them. When a couple sitting at the bar gave clear signals of preparing an exit, we made our move to replace them. But just as we took possession of our 2 square feet of bar space, the word came from above: our table was ready, no later than 20 minutes after we’d arrived. Maybe 15. There was magic in the air. Our drinks took a shortcut via steep inside stairs so that we wouldn’t have to carry them in the street; we walked back outside around the block, through the curtains, into the main dining room and sat down. Sigh. We had arrived.

Al di Là is a tradition. We’ll always come here once in a while and melt. « I love this place, says Marie, it has seen me through a lot, from way back in the beginning. And now you are here. Happy ending. » She is somehow wrong, though, it’s a happy beginning. But she is right to like Anna and Emiliano’s restaurant. There’s something in the air, here. Intangible, but very real. And the food is just superb.

So we picked up our menus and the wine list. Well, the wine is generally Marie’s baby. For my part, I had a rendez-vous with gnocchi and nervously glanced up and down the page, worried they might have disappeared. No, there they were, Malfatti, Swiss chard and ricotta gnocchi with brown butter and sage. I took a deep breath. Choosing a dish to compliment the malfatti was superfluous, but I did any way, because a hangar steak sounded like a funny choice for an Italian resto. Marie made love to her spring salad with peas and pea shoots and then had slow-cooked beef cheeks with green garlic and Jerusalem artichokes. Time flowed slowly, along with a bottle of pino nero. Eating at Al di Là is like embarking on a broken time machine; you know when you arrive but never really know when you’ll leave... In any case, my resolution is now strong. These gnocchi are the best thing I have ever eaten and next time, I’ll order a triple serving and nothing else.

We finished dinner by sharing an affogato di gelato. And then, still hypnotized by the company and confused by such delicious food, I think I messed up the tip. I’m quite happy doing maths while flying IFR but staring into amazing green eyes, it’s a whole other story.

We finally stood up and, having fetched our coats, headed for the door. Emiliano was eating dinner at a small corner table, alone, and gave us a smile and a wave as we were leaving. We waved back. Until next time...

When I was a very small boy, my parents had on the shelves on their library a few issues of a hybrid, a cross between a book and a magazine called Planète. Of Planète, I remember three things: a sexy James Bond cartoon; the excellent extraterrestrial short story « Comment servir l’homme »; and a drawing of the « car of tomorrow », slender lines, bright colors and a person sitting in the passenger seat, door open upwards and legs stretched, writing a letter on some folding tablet extended from the dash. The rest has blurred into oblivion.

Last week-end, however, as I drove up the Sea to Sky Highway with Marie towards Whistler and its hives, I suddenly realized that « tomorrow » had arrived silently, creeping up from the very bottom of my past until it stood in front of my amazed eyes, proud and true to itself. Sure, cars have been evolving continuously since the Planète days, and technology has slowly turned my drawing into a reality with the appearance of marvels like on-board GPS navigation. But I had never been as impressed by the car industry’s yearly advances as I was this time, driving a hybrid car.

My prior knowledge on the subject, I’ll admit it gladly, was rather fuzzy. I knew that hybrids existed, that they involved electricity, and that they were usually kind of ugly. That’s it. Oh, and the price tag wasn’t that thin, which to me defeats the purpose for the time being.

But on Sunday, I rented a Toyota Prius from Budget at a very reasonable rate and we took it for a spin. When I sat in the car for the first time, my eyes instantly went wide. I was inside a science-fiction story. Picture this: no key, no ignition. Instead, you carry a lock that you fit into the dash when ready to start. Then you press a power button similar to that of a computer and the car comes to life, powering itself and getting ready to roll. Don’t look for a conventional gear shift or lever, it doesn’t exist. But right on the dash you’ll find a smaller lever the size of a mini joystick, with a Neutral stop and 2 spring-loaded positions: Drive and Reverse. The Parking position has been replaced by another dash mounted button that you just push to engage.

So you get going and for a while, the car feels very much like a normal one. But soon you have to stop at a red light, and suddenly the engine stops. « Crap, you think, I’ve stalled. » But the light turns green and just to be sure you press the gas pedal. The car moves forward normally and you think you misheard. Then it happens again at the next light. So you start paying attention to the color LCD display that’s mounted on the dash and notice it seems to be showing information about the car’s power and drive.

Soon it becomes apparent that a lot more is going on than you’d thought. As it turns out, the Prius is equipped with a conventional combustion engine AND two AC motor/generators; a highly sophisticated system controls the various elements in order to combine all power sources, save energy, and reduce emissions. But the beauty of it is the way it works: if you slow down or brake, the gas engine’s consumption drops to zero and the electric engine turns into a generator, using what is called regenerating braking to slow the car down and recharge the battery at the same time.

Then come to a full stop. You’ll almost instantly hear the gas engine simply stop. The car becomes silent. Fuel consumption is at zero. Emissions are none. When you get moving again, the initial drive is supplied not by the gas engine but by the electric drive. Great for traffic. But that electric drive packs enough power to supplement that of the gas engine and they combine their efforts if you suddenly need a quick or fast move, as when passing a car.

Do you think that the car sounds different? You’re probably noticing the effect of the drive-by-wire Hybrid Synergy Drive, or Electronically-controlled Continuously Variable Transmission. Sounds too complicated? OK: there are no gears and no mechanical linkage between the driver and the engine. A computer is in charge of communications and silently transmits your orders to the car’s muscles. The gas engine can be designed smaller than average thanks to the help of the motors, and the car has very impressive aerodynamic and friction coefficients.

You’re still driving. The LCD display now becomes clearer. You can follow the colored flow of power on the diagram, as it runs towards the front wheels during acceleration, back to the battery when slowing down or disappears completely at times. The screen is touch-activated and can be switched to trip and economy statistics or audio control. And GPS if installed, I presume.

Very cool toy. But I like gadgets, so is it worth it? Well, the bottom line is this: this Sunday driving my rented Prius, I suddenly felt like I was doing the right thing. For the first time since I began driving vehicles (and that means ahelluva long time, and ahelluva lot of vehicles), I had a sense of pride, a sense of actually having an impact on our efforts to save the planet from the nightmare of fossil fuels. It wasn’t some obscure maneuver, some long-term goal that I hoped my children would benefit, maybe. It was happening in real time: Red light - engine off. Downhill - zero gas consumption, recharging. Traffic - silence and no emissions.

I’m sold. I don’t own a car and living downtown, wouldn’t want one any way. But things are changing fast, and when I’m ready, I now know what I’ll drive. I don’t know what color it will be, or what shape, or brand. I don’t know if it will cost a lot, or less. I don’t know if it will make coffee for me. But there’s one thing I know. It will be smart. It will be clean. It will be a hybrid.

Tonight was the Vancouver pre-screening of IMAX’s latest marvel, Sea Monsters 3D A Prehistoric Adventure. Along with a theater full of hand-picked celebrities like myself (!), ok, let’s say tourism industry slaves instead, I sat in front of the 5 storey-high screen and wondered if I was going to be impressed. It takes a lot to impress me when it comes to the underwater realm and computer animation.

I was. The National Geographic production was stunningly combining real ocean footage and amazing animation into a really immersive experience. Of course, this is a show meant to entertain and dazzle its audience more than it will educate. The content was however fascinating and made me ponder how much we are able to reconstruct of the reality of millions of years ago simply by studying fossils and geology.

Worth watching even if only for the cuteness of the baby dolichorhynchops - aka Dolly - that we follow on her journey through the oceans and the fantastic computer-generated schools of fish that had me wondering if they were real.